Are Women More Risk-Averse in Investing?

The National Council for Research on Women has a new report out called, Women in Fund Management: A Road Map for Achieving Critical Mass – and Why it Matters, that argues that diversifying the leadership at the highest levels of the financial sector will ensure a more secure financial future for everyone. They call it the “critical mass principle.” The report’s lead sponsor was long time financial superwoman Jacki Zehner, who wrote a really interesting commentary on her experiences in the sector and her hopes for the future on Huffington Post when the economy sunk.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that diversity raises the quality of leadership in any organization, financial included. As women on the panel this morning articulated, it’s not about being nice to women; it’s about better business, more responsible investing, and a more transparent financial sector overall. The world would simply be more fair were there a more diverse group of people making powerful decisions about how capital is invested. (And of course there is a HUGE conversation to be had about the potential for equity in a system that, in its very structure, encourages class inequality, but that’s for another day…)
Where the NCRW treads on controversial ground is in their aggregation of research indicating essential gender differences in investment style and decision-making:
A 2005 study from the Center for Financial Research at the University of Cologne documented differences between male and female fund managers: Women managers tended to take less extreme risk and to adopt more measured investment styles (which perform well over time). And according to research published in 2002 in the International Journal of Bank Marketing, women tend to make investment-related decisions with a detailed, comprehensive approach, while men are more likely to simplify data and make decisions based on an overall schema.
I always get nervous when scientists or sociologists start making wide-sweeping gender claims, but I’m also not scientifically sophisticated enough to evaluate whether these studies are valid.
Anyone have any thoughts?